Lessons Learned

In October 1974, I attended my first political meeting in Fairview, and there I met my MLA, Grant Notley. I was immediately taken with his vision for a better Alberta, and I listened as he invited us to join him in achieving it. That was the day my journey with the Alberta NDP started. In the years since, I have been a volunteer on many campaigns, I have served on the local executive, and I have run as a candidate several times. In 2015, I had the privilege to be elected as a member of Alberta’s first NDP government, and I proudly served as the first NDP energy minister.

As someone who has been both an observer of and a participant in election dynamics, both provincially and nationally, I was keen to read David McGrane’s The New NDP, which focuses on the federal NDP’s transformation between 2000 and 2015 — and the party’s dismal results in the last general election. McGrane builds his discussion around efforts to moderate and modernize, and...